In a video clip, seven fishermen climb into a wooden “Popo” boat that’s beached on the Republic of the Congo’s sandy shoreline. They start up the motor of the 40-foot, limo-length motorized canoe and head out into the Atlantic. The men aboard the weathered craft — its blue paint chipped and faded by years of salt and sun — could be out for a week.

When they reach deep waters, the fishermen lay their rope nets. In the dark, they pull them up and the cameraman captures footage of four skinny young scalloped hammerheads wriggling on deck, each perhaps as long as a man’s arm.

While small-scale “artisanal” fishermen say they target adult sharks, regulation net sizes ignore the hammerhead’s singular anatomy: Their head is so wide that juveniles like these are regularly caught. With low reproduction rates, this further threatens a critically endangered species.

Other footage pans over rows of dead sharks — of all species and sizes — laid out side-by-side on the beach.

The footage is part of a recent report on the Congolese shark trade by TRAFFIC, a UK-based nonprofit that monitors the wildlife trade. Their survey found that extreme pressure is being put on sharks by about 700 Popo boats and smaller, three-person “Vili,” boats that compete with 110 commercial trawlers in national waters.

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